Trump CDC director says Covid ‘escaped’ from Wuhan lab, contradicting Fauci

The former head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says Covid-19 "most likely" came from a laboratory in Wuhan where Chinese scientists were conducting research on coronaviruses.

Robert Redfield, the CDC director in the Trump administration, said in a new interview with CNN on Friday that Covid-19 likely began spreading in September or October of 2019, probably after infecting a lab worker accidentally.

“I am of the point of view that I still think the most likely ideology of this pathogen in Wuhan was from a laboratory. Escaped. Other people don’t believe that. That’s fine. Science will eventually figure it out,” he said.

“It’s not unusual for respiratory pathogens that are being worked on in a laboratory to infect the laboratory worker.”

Dr Anthony Fauci addressed the comments during the White House’s Covid-19 response news briefing on Friday, saying there were more likely explanations of the virus origin than having come from a laboratory.

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“I think what he likely was expressing is that there certainly are possibilities … of how a virus adapts itself to an efficient spread among humans,” Mr Fauci said.

“One of them is in the lab. And one of them – which is the more likely, which most public health officials agree with – is that it likely was below the radar screen, spreading in the community in China for several weeks, if not a month or more, which allowed it when it got recognised clinically to be pretty well-adapted.”

The World Health Organization is yet to release the long-awaited report on its investigation into the origins of the pandemic, which was expected to be made public in mid-March but has been delayed repeatedly.

While its team on the ground in Wuhan said in February that it was not looking further into the “highly unlikely” question of whether the virus escaped from a lab, the organisation’s director-general was forced to walk back claims a lab leak was off the table.

“Some questions have been raised as to whether some hypotheses have been discarded. Having spoken with some members of the team, I wish to confirm that all hypotheses remain open and require further analysis and study,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a media briefing in February.

The turn around came after President Joe Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan released a statement that the administration had “deep concerns” about how the WHO’s investigation was being conducted.

“It is imperative that this report be independent, with expert findings free from intervention or alteration by the Chinese government,” Mr Sullivan said.

Asked at the White House daily briefing whether the president was relying on the WHO report alone, press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden’s advisers would review the findings, while calling for an international investigation into both the origins of the pandemic and the lack of transparency from the Chinese.

“We’ll see what the report says, where we have concerns we’ll look at the underlying data if we have access to that, and then we’ll have to make a determination through an interagency process on what’s next,” Ms Psaki said.

Chinese officials on Friday previewed the results of the report in an attempt to get ahead of the results before the international community raises questions about the influence and independence of the findings, according to the Associated Press.

Feng Zijian, a Chinese team member and the deputy director of China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told envoys from 50 countries at its Foreign Ministry that a lab leak was viewed as extremely unlikely and that the two possibilities included an animal transmission or through cold food shipments, according to state broadcaster CCTV.

“China firmly opposes certain countries’ attempts to politicise the origin tracing issue and make groundless accusations and hold China accountable,” the ministry said in an online post about the briefing, according to AP.

The lab leak hypothesis has gained increasing mainstream scrutiny as the origins of Covid-19 remain undetermined more than a year after the pandemic, with a group of two-dozen scientists calling for an open letter for a new international inquiry.

The 4 March letter, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, says that the WHO team investigating the origins has insufficient access to properly investigate possible sources, including whether it escaped from a laboratory.

Mr Redfield, who left the CDC as part of the changing of administrations, said his opinion that the virus leaked from a laboratory did not imply that it was intentional.

“But I am a virologist. I have spent my life in virology. I do not believe this somehow came from a bat to a human, and at that moment in time, the virus came to the human, became one of the most infectious viruses that we know in humanity for human-to-human transmission,” he said.

“Normally when a pathogen goes from zoonotic to a human, it takes a while for it to figure out how to become more and more efficient in human-to-human transmission.”

The ex-director suggested that the virus learned that increased virility from gain of function research in an attempt to better understand and combat future coronavirus outbreaks.

“Let’s just say, I have coronavirus, and I’m working on it. Most of us in the lab are trying to grow virus. We try to help make it grow better and better and better and better and better and better, so we can do experiments and figure out about it,” he said.